Get your hands outta my stuff, wench.

So, as you may know by now, NJ requires all newly admitted attorneys to attend a “Skills and Methods” course within six months of being admitted to the state bar. The NJ Institute for Continuing Legal Education -- the inept organization that NJ allows to run the program [Ha! I tried to find a link about them and got a nice example of their ineptitude] -- sent this swell letter telling me how “convenient” it would be to fulfill this requirement. My two convenient choices? Class from 9am to 4pm five Saturdays in a row in January OR class from 6pm-9pm five Monday and Tuesday nights in a row in the spring. Maybe I’m a complete nut, but I wouldn’t call anything that gave me those two options as “convenient.” “Unconscionable,” perhaps. Add to that the fact that they have such limited space at each of the three also “convenient” locations that Newark (clearly the most in-demand site) filled up well before the deadline to sign up, leaving me and my fellows – quick sidebar: thank everything holy for Gabby, Rachel, and Mustafa because I wouldn’t be able to deal if they weren’t there with me – stuck going to Rutgers – New Brunswick. That’s an hour drive from my parents’ house.

Then again, I’ve been thinking about this CLE thing in a bit of a vacuum. By that I mean, it never occurred to me that it would cause ripples that would wreak tsunami-style havoc on the rest of my existence. Sure, I realized that it would cost me a pretty penny to get up to Jersey every weekend. Bless my understanding employer who gave me the week of the 21st off so that I mildly minimize the roundtrip tickets to Newark. I flew this past weekend (more on that in a sec), I’m renting a car next weekend, and then I’m flying up again for the aforementioned week off and the last class on February 3. At $125 per trip, this isn’t a cheap enterprise. And did I mention that the class itself costs $295? Well, yeah, it does.

But expense is only one prong of this wheel of horrors. Time and effort? I’m a friggin’ zombie today. I imagine I won’t stop being a friggin’ zombie until I sleep through the weekend of February 9. This week, I’ve got dinners with (at different times) Cicie, Jennie and the BFTC crew, and the studliest gang of men in the District. Not to mention that I double-booked Thursday and wanted to see Volver (which, yes, I still haven’t seen) with Dave and Vijay. These are all things that I would love to do during the weekend but I can’t because I have to be in Jersey -- for the next month of weekends. My busy lifestyle combined with the natural wear and tear of travel make me want to cry with exhaustion at just the thought of the next four weeks. Give me a second to compose myself.

Then there are the other mild annoyances that stem from this sort of lifestyle. For instance, stupid TSA (Transportation Security Administration) decided that there was something fishy in my check-in bag. When I opened it last night, I found a little flyer reporting TSA inspection and, basically, informing me that I had to take it and like it. I felt violated. First, they apparently had to inspect my shoes (like I’d put a bomb in a pair of Kenneth Coles…sneakers are a much more appropriate choice) but they didn’t return them to the plastic bag in which I had placed them. I don’t want the bottoms of my shoes touching my clothes. This is why I place them in bags whenever I pack them. Why can’t TSA respect that? Furthermore, they CUT THROUGH a plastic bag in which I had placed my toiletry kit. First, the thought of anyone rifling through my toiletries gives me a major case of the wiggins. Second, I bag the toiletries in case something leaks. What if moisturizer or shampoo or astringent had leaked all over my stuff? At the risk of being put on a no-fly list, I hate TSA. And I hate their stupid baggy/3.4 ounces policy. I’m not scooping my sodium PCA moisturizer into a 3.4-oz travel bottle. Go fuck yourself.

That outright violation put me in a terrible mood last night. I slept poorly, woke up late, and was halfway to work when I realized that I didn’t have my ID badge. I brought my laptop to Jersey with me and I left straight from work on Friday, so I had moved my badge from my work bag to my laptop bag. It’s still there. Worse still, once I had piggybacked up to my floor and tapped on the glass doors until Alice let me in, I sat at my desk, sneezed, and realized that I had forgotten to take my allergy medicine. Why? Because it’s still in my laptop bag, too. And due to the global warming (follow the link, Andrew wrote most of the copy!) that conservatives continue to deny, winter is the new spring and my allergies are in full effect.

So now I’m at work, tired, cranky, without my ID badge, allergizing like it’s going out of style, and still feeling a tiny bit violated after revisiting the TSA search of the night before. And we all know that NJ’s ridiculous CLE requirements are to blame. Now excuse me while I try to sort out my tasks and appointments this week. I have to find time to do the CLE ASSIGNMENT that’s due on January 17. I have to draft a divorce complaint and motion and do a bunch of other stuff. Know that you stand with me if you’re now scratching your head wondering what this has to do with my career.

I hate everything.